


Beat Him to It

by iselsis



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood: Lost Days, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Brother Acquisition, Bad Parent Jack Drake, Brotherly Bonding, Child Abuse, Enemy to Caretaker, Gen, Hurt Tim Drake, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Has Daddy Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Past Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Platonic Cuddling, Protective Bruce Wayne, Protective Jason Todd, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake is Robin, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28191915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iselsis/pseuds/iselsis
Summary: Jason went to Drake Manor intent on killing his replacement, and he walked out with bloody knuckles and a kid in his arms.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jack Drake & Tim Drake, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 415
Kudos: 2064
Collections: Red Hood vs Red Robin





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [envysparkler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysparkler/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told Envy I'd trade her something for a "Tim getting claimed" addition to her shifter au, and she wanted, this _will_ shock you, a Jason and Tim enemy-to-caretaker fic.

Robin should have died with Jason, but now it was going to die with Timothy Drake.

Jason had been planning for months, decided _how_ , decided _when_ , but it had taken him _weeks_ to decide _where_.

A vicious part of him wanted to drag the Replacement to an abandoned warehouse with a crowbar and let Bruce find one Robin exactly how he’d found the other, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle a warehouse without a panic attack.

The Titans Tower had a vindictive allure to it. A part of Jason seethed and wanted to pick the Tower just to spite the Titans who had shunned him for daring to wear Goldie’s costume after he’d abandoned it, but who’d embraced _his_ replacement with open arms. He wanted to turn their beacon, their fortress, into a house of horror they’d never forget. Still, there was too much risk of being interrupted. Jason didn’t intend on making it quick.

Wayne Manor? He’d considered it, considered dragging the Replacement up to his old bedroom, gagging him, and torturing him until he died of shock or blood loss. Bruce would be gone most the day with business, Dickwad would be out with friends, and Alfred wouldn’t be near the bedrooms most of the day, so he would be able to be a bit loud. Pliers to the fingernails, cattle prod to the eyes, _crowbar_ to the _ribs…_ He was rather fond of the idea of snagging the boy from his bed and teaching him what happened to people who took things that weren’t theirs. It would be a lesson that Drake would learn briefly, but Bruce would never be able to forget. He could even pick up his old copy of Pride and Prejudice while he was at it. Maybe Replacement would even like to hear him read between sessions. The thought of them not even thinking to check Jason’s room until the Replacement’s corpse had started to rot and stink was nearly enough to override his better judgement.

Wayne Manor had beautiful potential, but if he ran into Alfred somehow, he knew he’d lose his resolve.

The Batcave had appeal. A _lot_ of appeal, since the Replacement would frequently train by himself in the cave while _Bruce_ was at work. Jason nearly did it, but he wasn't sure how the security may have changed, and using his own codes to get into the cave would have given him away. The _poetry_ of beating the bird in the Batcave, proving that Batman was completely and utterly incapable of protecting his Robins, though, was enough that he was sorely tempted to push back his timeline just so he could clip Replacement’s wings in the shadow of the bat.

But no. He’d been planning things to long, too thoroughly, to jeopardize his revenge for the sake of poetic— _extremely_ poetic, giving fucking Frost a run for his money—justice.

So Jason decided to go with the next best option: the Replacement’s own house.

Green pulsed in his vision, bringing a vicious grin to his face. It still proved just how pathetic the new Robin was, but with the personal touch proving that _nowhere_ was safe from the Robin he’d replaced.

Though, seriously, Replacement’s house wasn’t safe from _anyone_. The security was shit. Working girls wore clothes more secure than Timothy Drake’s fucking _mansion_. All Jason had to do was pull a wire, and _presto_ , no alarms. No police. Most the windows weren’t even locked, probably courtesy of Tim’s night job.

Jason went straight for the Replacement’s room, climbing up the tree outside to be able to push open the window with a nearly silent _hiss_.

The place was an absolute wreck—that little part of Jason trained by Alfred _screamed_ —of abandoned clothes, papers, books, _everything_. The flickers of green that had been pulling at him all day coalesced until he couldn’t even see the mess anymore. Not only was the Replacement a pretender who stole Jason’s place before his body was even cold, he was also so incompetent that he could even keep his room clean. Still, he seemed to be _oh so obedient_ to Batman, and wasn’t the man just _drooling_. He’d finally gotten his perfect little Robin. So much better than Jason ever could have been, probably even better than _Goldie_.

Not for long, though.

Jason chuckled, the green fog clearing with intent but still tinging his vision. Jason was going to make him _suffer_ , and before the end of his revenge, Bruce Wayne would regret giving away Jason’s costume—his fucking _death shroud_ —and his place in the family. He would regret _lying_ to Jason and acting for _years_ like he actually gave a damn what happened to Jason. Would regret that he wasn’t the one who was shot, and the Replacement would regret ever being _born._

The bedroom and attached bathroom were empty and dark, despite the fact that Jason’s cameras had caught Drake’s return, so he slipped soundlessly into the deserted hallway. His gloved fingers trailed over the textured hilt of his favorite knife as he imagined plunging it through Drake’s hands. Maybe cut off a finger or two. Or _all_ of them. He could keep them and send them in the mail over the course of months, maybe _years_. Drive home the point when the whim struck him. Yes, that was definitely going on his to do list, the green hummed to him.

The hallway light was off, and all the doors were dark. It was late, though, Jack Drake would most likely be sleeping unaware as his nocturnal son stalked the halls, also unaware as Jason stalked him. Did Jack know about his son being Robin? Probably not. No sane parent would let his kid run around the city with a strange man to fight crime, even if the costume wasn’t panties anymore. Jason grinned at the idea of telling him, but not yet. Maybe later, but that would also disrupt his plans, and he wouldn’t let that happen.

There was light bleeding up a staircase, and the distant hum of voices, so Jason quickly followed it.

The lower floor was just as pitch as the upstairs except for a single room with an open doorframe. He wouldn’t be able to get close enough to see inside without risking being seen, but he could hear fine.

Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

There was clearly a fight going on, and not just an argument. Both the Drakes were awake, then, and Jack Drake sound _furious_ even before Jason could make out the words. There was a repetitive _snap-slap_ followed by small whimpers that Jason would have found immensely more enjoyable if they were being caused by him.

“YOU FUCKING _BITCH_!” Jack screamed suddenly, and there was an even louder _snap!_

Tim cried out in pain, and to hell with not being seen. _Clearly,_ the Drakes were occupied with _something_ , and Jason was going to find out. Even if he was seen, it wouldn’t take much effort to tie Drake to the pipes in the kitchen and take Tim upstairs for their _fun_ time. Jason stepped to the side, enough that he could see into the room without drawing obvious attention to himself.

Jason looked in just as the blow fell right between Tim’s shoulder blades.

Jack Drake stood above his son in the living room, his face red and the belt fisted in his hand already rising for the next blow. Tim was on his hands and knees, stripped to his boxers, his profile to Jason at an angle that let Jason see the panic in his face as he stared at the ground, tears streaming down his face as he panted in pain, and his back, raw and _bleeding_ from welts, black and blue with old bruises. As Jason was watching, Jack whipped the belt against Tim’s neck, causing the boy to choke a scream of pain.

“Shut up!” Jack snarled. “Shut up, you fucking whore.”

“I—I’m sor—” Tim tried to gasp, but Jack lurched forward and seized a fistful of his hair to yank his head back savagely.

Jason was frozen.

“I said _shut up_!” Jack slammed Tim’s face sideways into the sharp edge of the coffee table.

Replacement went limp, and for a second, Jason thought he was dead. Killed by his own father, right there in the living room, in front of the man who’d come to torture and kill him but could only watch with a dropped jaw in frozen horror.

Tim groaned and struggled weakly, but his father slammed his head down again. Tim went still, but this time Jack had turned enough for Jason to see Tim’s dazed eyes as they tried to look up at his father.

Not dead yet.

Another blow like that, and maybe.

Jack pulled Tim up to his knees by his hair.

“Who were you with, _Timmy_ ,” Jack demanded, giving his hair a sharp yank that made Tim hiss. “Why were you sneaking back in?”

Tim’s face crumpled from pain to utter devastation. “N-no one, Dad. I—Please, I promise, I was just on a walk—”

“At _four in the morning_?!” Jack screamed directly into Tim’s ear, making the boy wince hard at the sound, then again at the way the first wince had pulled his hair. “You were out fucking, weren’t you? And you’re going to have some bitch turn up on my doorstep with a fucking bastard and _who’s_ going to raise your kid then? Well?”

Tim’s face screwed up with such hurt and anger that Jason thought he was going to attack, put some of that training to work, but then his brow loosened and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Or maybe you’ve been out fucking boys, _eh_?” Jack shook Tim’s head. “Gonna get AIDS and die like a fucking bitch before you’re fourteen. And how will that look to the shareholders, my own son dying like a _fucking whore._ ”

Timothy Drake was nearly fifteen.

Jason only knew that from his _murder research_ , and he still knew Tim better than his father did.

Jason was there to murder the Replacement. His world had glowed green for days with the thought of torturing that little body that trembled uncontrollably just feet away, of seeing that face all drawn up and devastated just like it was, with those baby blue eyes overflowing with pain and betrayal and that little lip quivering in terror. Jason had no right to be mad at someone for doing exactly what he’d planned, unless he was going to be mad that Jack had already started, but that wasn’t why the Lazarus Pit roared in his ears.

_“You couldn’t even get a damn pack of cigarettes?!” Willis hurled his empty beer bottle at Jason’s head._

_Jason dodged, but not fast enough, and the bottle clipped his ear as it sailed past him and hit the wall with a loud crash. It took everything the seven-year-old had not to back away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his dad, and he couldn’t walk backwards in his bare feet without knowing where the glass was._

_“Th-they stole the money, Daddy,” Jason stammered, still clutching a hand around the long gash on his arm the muggers had given him when he’d tried to fight them for the ten dollar bill. “I—I couldn’t—”_

_Willis surged to his feet, and hell, Jason was stumbling back without even thinking. He stepped on a large piece of glass the sliced another gash along the heel of his foot, but it was better than getting a dozen tiny pieces embedded in his skin. His back hit the wall, and then there was nowhere to go._

_Willis’s eyes glittered darkly as he stalked forward. He smelled of beer. He smelled of a_ lot _of beer, and he always hit worse when he was drunk. Jason swallowed hard and tried not to cry._

_He failed._

_Willis smacked him so hard he flew sideways. He laned on his hands and knees, thrown so far the glass wasn’t even near him in a small mercy._

_Willis seized a fistful of Jason’s hair and shook him. “I bet you stole it. I bet you used that money to buy yourself a candy bar, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”_

_Jason choked on a sob and shook his head. “N-no, Daddy, no! I didn’t steal it! They took it from me!”_

_Daddy was going to kill him. Jason’s dad was going to kill him the same way he bragged about killing that store clerk. No one was going to catch him, and he was going to brag about killing Jason too._

_Willis slowly pulled Jason to his feet by his hair. Jason stood as soon as he could get his feet underneath him, hoping that he hadn’t done something bad his dad would hit him more for._

_Willis took Jason by the shoulders and turned him around to face him. Calloused fingers took Jason’s chin in their grip and squeezed painfully. His eyes were dark pits of hatred and alcohol._

_“You go get those cigarettes, boy, and don’t come back until you have them,” Willis warned, then shoved Jason at the door._

_Jason’s back hit the doorknob hard, and he was sure it would bruise. It did. “Wh—How?”_

_Willis shrugged dramatically and dropped back onto the sofa. “Hell if I care. Steal ‘em. Steal the money. Whore yourself out like the useless bitch you are. Just get me those cigarettes.”_

_Jason barely had the presence of mind to grab his shoes before he ran out the door._

_He got the cigarettes._

Jack kicked his prone son’s ribs _hard_ , hard enough to bruise, maybe even break, and Jason was jolted back to the present. To the hallway outside a living room in a Bristol mansion where his Replacement was being abused as bad as Jason ever was in a shitty apartment in Crime Alley. There, nearly naked and humbled on the floor, Timothy Drake wasn’t Robin, he wasn’t the Replacement. He was just a hurt kid Jason had been planning to hurt more. Why? He could barely even remember around the pulsing green in his mind that screamed for Jack’s blood.

“Maybe,” Jack started, a cruel lilt to his voice and tip to his lips as he lifted his foot and dug it into Tim’s neck, “we can put that libido to good use, don’t you think?”

Tim’s whimper was muffled by the floor his face was being ground into.

“I know a few other fags like you,” Jack said, so low Jason almost couldn’t hear, “who would pay quite a bit for a fuck like you.”

Jason didn’t even hear the end of the sentence before the green rage had engulfed him. He felt pressure on his fist, heard screaming, but it wasn’t until his vision cleared that he realized that he was on top of Jack, plowing his fist repeatedly into the bloody mess that had been a face.

“NO!” Tim screamed again, grabbing Jason in a blood choke from behind and trying to pull Jason off his abusive asshole of a _dead_ beat father. “Get off my dad!”

Jason grabbed Tim by his scrawny little neck and suddenly rocked forward, flipping the smaller boy over his shoulder.

Tim landed with a sharp cry of pain that brought Jason back to his senses. Jack made a wet gurgling sound that was _so_ satisfying, but Tim whimpered and was trying to roll onto his stomach. Jason had flipped him without thinking, meaning that the kid had just landed _hard_ on all of his whip lashes and gaping wounds.

“Dammit,” Jason swore, grabbing Tim by the arm as he stood.

Tim yelped in fear as Jason dragged him out of the room and up the stairs to his bedroom where the window Jason had crawled in through was still open. Jason threw the switch on as he went.

“Let me go!” Tim screamed, pulling as hard as he could against Jason, but Tim was an injured little kid, and Jason was thrumming with adrenaline and magical rage.

“What, so you can go get your ass handed to you some more?” Jason snapped, turning on Tim suddenly and staring him down. “You’re fucking _Robin_ , and you let him treat you like that?”

Tim gasped and stumbled back. That time, Jason let him.

“How do you know who I am?” Tim demanded, his voice strong but his eyes wide and terrified and his almost bare body shaking and covered in goosebumps.

Jason walked over and closed the window to block out the draft, then turned to look Tim dead in the eye. Blood was seeping from a cut on his temple where his dad had hit him against the coffee table, leaving one half of his face a bloody, sticky mess. He wondered, did Drake know anything about him? Or had Bruce just swept his existence under the rug as soon as he was out of the way?

Tim’s reaction gave the truth away.

Spindly fingers covered a shocked mouth. “J-Jason? But you’re dead!”

Jason spread his arms in a _here I am_ gesture that Tim did _not_ interpret correctly.

Tim surged forward so fast that Jason didn’t even have time to block him before he slammed into Jason’s chest.

“Jason!” Tim bawled, tightening his grip, leaving Jason blinking.

The hell was going on?

“Replacement?” he asked tentatively.

“You came for me!” Tim sobbed in relief. That was a _lot_ of relief, leaving Jason feeling wrong-footed, what with the whole ‘only having shown up to brutally murder the kid’ thing. He felt kind of bad about that now, and figured he could at least kind of make up for it.

“Yes?” he said weekly. What was he supposed to do with his hands? He awkwardly clapped one on the back of Tim’s head, which was pretty much the only thing he could reach that he was pretty sure wasn’t injured. It wasn’t much for comfort, but the Replacement sobbed harder and leaned farther into Jason’s chest, so Jason ran his fingers over that silky black hair again and again until the sobbing petered out to hitched breaths and lots of sniffling.

Tim shuddered and clenched his trembling fingers into the stiff leather of Jason’s jacket. “Is my mom here?”

Jason looked around the room, like she might pop up from anywhere, but he was pretty sure he’d read that the kid’s mom was dead. “No?”

Tim sniffed hard and nodded against Jason. “Th-that’s good. I didn’t want to go to hell.”

Jason choked and pushed the kid back by his shoulders. “What did you say?”

Tim looked up—god, the kid was short—at Jason with the slightest frown. “I’m glad I’m here. I thought…I was never as good as you, so I never thought I’d go to heaven, but then you came for me, and—”

Something in Jason’s heart twitched. God, the kid had wanted to be good like _Jason_? Had he not heard _anything_ about Jason? … _Had_ he not heard anything bad about Jason?

“You’re not dead, stupid.”

Tim’s brows drew together in confusion, then his entire expression shattered into grief. “You’re not here?”

Jason flicked his forehead. “I’m not dead either…anymore. Trust me, not as fun as the punk bands make it out to be.”

That didn’t help anything. Tim’s eyes welled with more tears, but he stepped past Jason to his bed, where he promptly collapsed face first into the pillows for another round of sobs.

Jason hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed.

The wounds on Tim’s back were _bad_. There were at least twelve gaping wounds, about half semi-congealed and yellowish like they’d been closed over and reopened just with the latest beating, and several scars and bruises. His stomach twisted at that. Not only had Jack managed to beat his kid without Batman finding out—because for all his faults, Bruce would have smashed Jack’s face in himself—he’d done it frequently.

The older wounds also looked like they were starting to get infected. Understandable. It was hard to treat wounds on your own back, and Tim clearly hadn’t wanted anyone to know about this. Jason understood that too. Hiding any weakness to keep Bruce from seeing it, in case it would mean losing that intoxicatingly fulfilling love. Meant losing Robin.

Jason stood wordlessly and went to the bathroom to find the first aid kit. He returned a minute later, poured some rubbing alcohol to a cotton ball, then hesitated.

“This is going to hurt a lot, Tim, but you’ve got to let me do it, got it?” Jason said.

Tim’s shoulders shook with another sob. Jason took that as a _yes, please save me from a slow and feverish death by infection because my dad is an asshole_.

Tim’s body flinched hard from the alcohol at the first brush, but Jason heard a deep breath against the pillow. The second touch, Tim only winced slightly.

Jason moved as quickly and gently as he could while still being thorough over each wound. Tim didn’t react beyond hissing and flinching, but Jason found himself mumbling meaningless reassurances anyway until he’d finished.

Jason dropped the cotton ball in his hand onto the floor with the rest of the blood and pus stained cotton balls he’d already used. Not like it could make the room any _worse_ , and Replacement wasn’t coming back anyway except maybe to pack.

“Are you still awake?” Jason poked the side of Tim’s head.

Tim didn’t move, so Jason poked him harder and prodded his head to the side. Tim stared forward with unfocused eyes, looking utterly defeated. Hell. How had thinking about that expression been so exciting earlier? He’d give anything to be anywhere else. Emotions were the devil.

“Hey…kid. Little wi— _baby bird,_ what’s wrong?” He’d liked the hair touching thing, so Jason started petting him again, only barely drawing back from scratching behind his ear. That was for dogs, he remembered, not for small teenagers.

Tim’s face screwed up like he was going to cry again. His eyes were glistening. If he did start crying, one of the two of them was getting tossed out the window, and Jason didn’t even know which.

“You’re not real,” Tim sniffled.

Jason frowned, then flicked Tim’s forehead. “Pretty sure I am, baby bird.”

And Tim was crying. If it weren’t for the hand that came to rest on his, Jason would have defenestrated himself then and there, but Tim’s hand was so small and cold, digging into his like a corpse desperate for life. Jason knew a thing or two about that.

“You died,” Tim mumbled.

Jason nodded and rolled his hand over so he could give Tim’s a brief squeeze. “And I came back. Surprise.”

Tim shook his head in denial and buried his face again. Jason sighed and put his hands under Tim, pulling him up until he was sitting. He didn’t have time for an emotional breakdown. Jack, if he wasn’t dead, was eventually going to wake up and call the police, and Jason needed to have Tim wrapped, dressed, packed, and _gone_ before the cops arrived. If Tim was in denial, then he’d just have to stay there.

“This is a dream. You’re dreaming, and you have to let me take care of you, okay?” Jason said, grabbing the gauze from the first aid kid and waving it where Tim could see.

Tim frowned, then nodded slowly. He looked tired enough to believe it—a long patrol, a long beating, and a lot of crying must have wrung him out.

Despite how carefully Jason worked, Tim still hissed and flinched in pain every time new gauze touched a wound.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, kid, that hurts like a bitch. You’ll be safe soon, though, okay? We’re going…” Where? Jason tugged at his lip with his teeth for a moment. Not Wayne Manor. He wasn’t…he wasn’t going over there. “To my apartment. Would you like that? We can hang out for a while before you wake up.” _Or go to sleep._ The kid had dark bags under his eyes and exhaustion etched into every line of his frown.

“There we go,” Jason said as he tucked the gauze in and started to lean back. “Nice and snug. It’ll last for a bit, till I can get you in some real bandages.”

Tim tracked his movement with his eyes, his expression hope and glum reluctance in equal parts. Jason thought he was about to say something, but Tim just silently raised a hand and laid it against Jason’s cheek. Jason inhaled sharply at the touch—the gentlest he’d received since even before he’d died. It wasn’t…bad. And it was helping baby bird, so…Jason leaned into it just a bit.

“I wish you were alive,” Tim whispered, and wasn’t _he_ going to be thrilled once the shock wore off. “Bruce would be so happy if you were alive.”

…Maybe not thrilled, because there was no way that was true.

Jason scoffed. “Bruce doesn’t want to see me.”

Tim swiped at his nose and sniffled pathetically. “Bruce nearly killed himself because you died, Jason.”

Water cold like death ran down his spine. “…what?”

Tim stopped talking after dropping a helluva bombshell and started looking around. “I’m cold.”

Jason stood, his mind racing, and his mouth said without him really paying attention, “I’ll get it for you. Stay put.”

Jason hunted around for a minute before finding a pair of sweatpants, and loose shirt, and a hoodie to throw over it that would hopefully cushion the wounds a bit in case they got bumped. He dumped the clothes by Tim’s side, but Tim just stared at them blankly until Jason grabbed the shirt and forced it over his head, then the hoodie, and then pulled him up to stand with his hands braced against Jason’s shoulders so Jason could put the sweatpants on him, one leg at a time.

Packing was going to be impossible with Drake as useless as he was. They could come back for stuff later, but Tim was fading fast, from shock or sleep deprivation, it was unclear.

“I’m going to pick you up, alright?” Jason asked, still on his knees.

Tim paused a moment, like he was buffering, then nodded once. Jason put an arm under his knees and an arm under his back and lifted him into the air. He weighed almost nothing, despite the muscles Jason had seen. He was so small, even smaller than Jason had been at his age.

Tim lolled his head against Jason’s shoulders as Jason started walking. It was more trust than he deserved, being Tim’s pillow, but he still found himself leaning his head against Tim’s in reciprocation.

It occurred to him that the kid might want shoes later, but Jason mentally shrugged. He’d give Tim a pair of socks later and hope the kid was smart enough to not try to run in Crime Alley once he’d come back to himself.

Oh, well. Jason would just have to hold onto him to make sure he wouldn’t do something that stupid. What a pain.

Despite himself, Jason smiled as he carried Tim down the stairs. Jason took a bit to check on things—Jack Drake was still breathing, unfortunately, but passed out, more fortunately. No police yet, then. After that, it was a few more minutes to track down a set of car keys, and a couple more to find the garage. There was a cherry red sports car in there, but when Jason clicked the fob on the set of keys he’d snagged, the lights flickered on a nondescript black car. It was still nice, nicer than anything anyone in his neighbor had if they weren’t selling drugs, but not as eye catching. Not as fun either, but at least they’d be less likely to get caught.

Jason put Tim in the backseat. Tim mumbled blearily, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Jason smiled and went back into the house to find a blanket. There was one he’d seen in the living room that looked perfect to offer comfort and conceal the technically kidnapped child in the back of the car. And if Jason got to kick Jack one more time, well…he’d deserved it.

Jason deserved it too, but he was making up for it in other ways.

Jason returned to Tim, covered him up, then climbed into the driver’s seat, turned on the car, opened the garage door, and pulled out, taking his ill-gotten baby bird with him.

Batman would worry eventually, maybe. Maybe he’d even worried for Jason…

 _He nearly killed himself_ , Tim had said.

Well.

They’d be talking about that.

And maybe his revenge could wait a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Oh, sweet! I got five new subscribers today!  
> My little brother (16), thinking he's hot stuff: You're excited about _that_? On YouTube, you'd only get like 78 cents for how many you have.  
> Me: This isn't YouTube and I'm _really_ happy about this and I'm not getting paid anything either  
> MLB: Then why do you do that?! *clearly thinks I'm stupid*  
> Me:...because I want to?  
> *cue long argument where he keeps trying to explain to me that YouTube is better despite the fact that I am writing several thousand word short stories and that is a completely different medium* *cue frustration*  
> He's at the age where he knows nothing but thinks that he knows everything, and he's cocky enough to let everyone know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce's POV because I love you guys too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all wanted this continued. A _lot_. I'm going to pretend that I'm upset that I was bullied into writing this now.

Bruce woke to a sharp rap on his door before it was flung open so urgently that he was rolling out of bed before he even registered that it was Alfred standing with his hand white-knuckled on the doorknob and his eyes intense and ablaze with fear in a way Bruce had never seen before.

“What happened?” Bruce didn’t waste time asking questions, just went straight for the dresser and started throwing on clothes.

Alfred’s voice was composed in a way his eyes were not. “There are police cars and an ambulance at Drake Manor, and an officer stopped by to ask if we had seen Master Tim.”

Bruce’s blood ran cold, and he froze with his shirt halfway tugged on. Tim was missing. _Jason was missing_. Jason was missing, and then he was dead, and Tim was missing.

Bruce pulled his shirt down so hard he heard something snap faintly above the roar in his ears. What could have happened? An ambulance, that meant that someone had been injured, Jack if Tim was missing. What would be the point of kidnapping Tim straight from his house, though? A ransom? Or something more sinister? Even if it were a ransom and the ransom was paid, though, there was no guarantee that Tim would be returned alive. Bruce had to find him, fast.

Alfred followed him quickly, grabbing Bruce’s coat as he yanked on his shoes at the garage. It wasn’t actually cold enough to need a coat, and the efficient, terrified part of his brain screamed at him that he didn’t have a few seconds to spare, but the look on Alfred’s face was enough to have him snatching the coat and pulling it on as he went. Jason’s loss hurt Alfred just as much as it had hurt Bruce, even though Alfred was so much better at managing his emotions, and the same panic rushing through Bruce’s veins was undoubtably running just as cold in Alfred. Alfred needed something to do, some way to help, some way to take care of people when he was upset.

“We’ll find him, Al. Go down to the cave and see if you can find his tracker, in case he tried to follow the attacker as Robin,” Bruce told Alfred firmly as he grabbed the keys to a car. Bruce doubted that Tim would have done that, especially since they’d been coming off of a long patrol and he must have been exhausted, and doing so could jeopardize their identities, but it would give Alfred something to focus on for at least ten minutes so Bruce could focus on finding Tim. “If you can’t find that, try to track his phone.”

Alfred nodded and walked quickly away. Bruce pretended for his own sake not to see the way his nearly-father’s hands were shaking, pretended that his own weren’t just as bad. He couldn’t afford to get distracted worrying about Alfred, and vice versa. They were leaning against each other like two cards at the base of a house of cards. If either one of them went down, the other would follow, and everything would collapse on top of them.

It was barely a minute by car to the Drakes’ house, and Bruce normally walked the few times he went over there during the day, but he needed speed. Seconds counted. _Seconds_ , and he would have saved Jason.

There were three police cars outside the house, crime scene tape over the door, and an ambulance hanging open with no gurney inside. They must have still been loading Jack up. Unless he was dead.

Bruce ducked under the yellow tape and followed the sound of voices through the house. To hell with regulation, _he_ had been more a father to Tim the last year and a half than Jack Drake had been for Tim’s entire _life_ , and if Jack was hospitalized, then Tim would be coming home with Bruce anyway. He had the right to know.

There was a police officer standing in the doorway of the living room, but Bruce kept walking.

The officer glanced up and noticed him, holding up a hand to stop him. “You can’t go in there, sir. This is a crime scene.”

“Where’s Tim?” Bruce said, gritting his teeth to keep from snapping or growling or breaking down completely. “What happened?”

The officer frowned. “Who are you, sir?”

Bruce took in a deep breath and ran a hand down his face. They were wasting too much _time_ on formalities when he was clearly the most qualified to track down ~~his son~~ ~~his Robin~~ _his son_ , but he needed allies, or they would kick him out, and he would have to waste more time hacking into the files later—the files that wouldn’t be written for at least another hour.

“I’m Bruce Wayne. I live next door and take care of Tim when his father is gone. He’s like a son to me; _please_ , where is he?”

The officer winced and his expression filled with pity. He thought that Tim was dead, Bruce could see it in his eyes, but there was no way, not yet. Tim had only been home a few hours, three at the most, and even if he’d been taken immediately, that was hardly any time to so much as be taken to a secondary location. No matter what the kidnapper had taken him for, whether for a ransom or for… Whatever they wanted, they would want him alive for at least a little while.

“Mr. Drake was attacked in the living room. He passed out while on the phone with the dispatcher, so they weren’t able to get much information from him, but he said that Tim had been taken by the person who attacked him,” the officer said delicately. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you right now.”

“Was anything else taken?” Bruce asked quickly.

The officer shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell. The Drakes seem to have been the targets of the attack. Do they have any enemies that you know of?”

 _Enemies_. Because this wasn’t how a ransom kidnapping would go. It would have been easier for the average thug to nab Tim while he was at school, or at the very least from his bedroom instead of risking a confrontation with his father. Jack Drake may have had business rivals. He could have done something to upset one of them, could have tangled with the mob and gotten into trouble, prompting Tim to be taken as a hostage. Even though Tim could have fought off most thugs, and had martial arts training on the record to cover for that fact, he would have gone willingly if it meant saving his dad. If Jack was so badly injured that he was passing out, though, then it was very possible that the intruder didn’t care if he lived or died or was mentally capable to meet demands—like they would have if they were trying to use Tim as a hostage—which would imply that Tim was the primary target. And while Jack Drake had enemies, _Tim Drake_ did not.

But Robin did.

If Bruce had gotten another Robin killed just for being associated with him, Bruce didn’t think he would live with himself.

“I can’t think of anyone,” Bruce forced himself to say. “Can I have a look around? Please, I might notice something out of place. I’ve been here before.”

The officer frowned again at that, then turned to look into the room. “Stay here. I’ll ask the detective in charge.”

With that, he stepped into the room and finally out of Bruce’s way.

Bruce stepped into the doorframe, not going any farther to avoid antagonizing the people he frustratingly needed, and did a cursory scan of the room.

Jack was on the gurney, with one of the medics shining a penlight into his eyes. He was unconscious, but a quick glance showed that he looked like he’d been beaten to hell and back. His face was a bloody mess. That let Bruce know several things about the person he was dealing with right away. First, it was unlikely it was a meta, judging by the fist-shaped bruises forming and the lack of splash damage; second, the attacker was likely trained in physical combat if that had been his primary weapon _and_ he’d been able to take Tim; third, Jack’s survival had not been a high priority—the number of facial blows could have easily killed him or rendered him brain dead—so it was not a ransom or blackmail kidnapping. Robin, almost certainly then, was the target.

There was blood splattered on the carpet near the fireplace, right next to the gurney, which indicated that that was where Jack had been beaten. Looking around the room quickly, he saw nothing else out of place. There were valuables on the shelves, Tim’s phone—dammit, that had been far more likely to yield results than the suit—on the coffee table, but nothing had been taken. The coffee table itself, though, about ten feet from where Jack had been beaten, was off kilter, and—

“There’s blood on the table,” Bruce snapped. He felt a rush of ecstasy at the clue, an indication to who had taken Tim.

He didn’t wait for permission, just marched into the room, stopped a foot or so from the table, and pointed at the blood smear on the edge. The wood was cherry red and the blood was drying, but it was still sticky. It hadn’t been there long, another indication that Tim hadn’t been gone long enough to have been killed.

The head detective, a stocky man with a balding scalp and fierce scowl, turned on him. “Who are you?”

“The neighbor,” Bruce said, a little more impatiently than he should have dared, but he had already _explained_ that. “There’s blood on the edge of the coffee table, and it’s been shoved out of place. It might be the attacker’s blood.”

 _Please, please, be the attacker’s blood._ If the intruder had committed a violent crime before and been caught, his DNA would have been registered, and it would take the Batcomputer minutes to get a name, and only a few more minutes for a last known address and list of known associates. If the intruder was _good_ at his job, though, he might have never been caught and the blood would be a red herring. It could also be Tim or Jack’s, which would be even more useless.

 _Please don’t be Tim’s_.

The detective scowled harder, but he looked closer at the table, then nodded to one of the photographers.

Bruce stepped a bit closer into the room. He needed to assert himself as useful without making himself a nuisance when he had no legal right to be there. He hated playing personal politics at the best of times, but with Tim— _his_ son, whatever claim Jack might have to him—in danger, it was all he could do to not launch into his own investigation right there.

“Tim stayed with our family when his father was hospitalized before for several months,” Bruce said. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up looking like a subject. “Please, I want to help find him. If there’s _anything_ I can do…”

The detective looked up at Bruce with a frown, a calculating expression tugging his lips this way and that before he finally grumbled, “Would you know if something’s missing?”

Bruce nodded quickly. Even though Bruce would bet his fortune that this was not a robbery gone wrong, it would give him the excuse to look for his own clues. “Likely.”

The detective nodded and marched out the room, waving for Bruce to follow him. “We don’t know where the point of entry is. The doors are locked, but half the windows are unlatched. The wire on the security system was cut, though.”

If Bruce got Tim— _When_ Bruce got Tim back, he would not be returning him to Jack until there had been a serious upgrade to their home security. He couldn’t believe that Tim would be so lax. No, he could. Tim had likely left the windows open so he could be sure his father wouldn’t unknowingly lock him out, and Jack had been oblivious enough for it to work.

“Their bedrooms and the safe are upstairs,” Bruce said instead of the long stream of curses he wanted to hurl at the semi-conscious man being wheeled toward the door.

As soon as Jack had been driven out into the hall and out of his way by the medics, Bruce walked briskly for the upstairs, resisting the urge to run. Did Tim keep any Robin related items in his bedroom? If he did, how well had he hidden them, and had the intruder found them? He wasn’t meant to take those kinds of things out of the cave, apart from his panic button, but Bruce knew he sometimes got caught up in cases and took them home to work a bit more.

He went for Jack’s room first, since it was the first one, and did a short sweep. He’d never been in Jack’s bedroom, though Tim had pointed it out to him one time when he’d been carrying the slightly queasy boy back to his house when he’d caught a stomach bug and Bruce wouldn’t let him patrol despite his fervent protestations. There was no obvious sign of ransacking, though. Nothing had been pulled out of the drawers, nothing indents in the carpet indicating something had been moved, and a wallet and car keys sat untouched on the dresser. 

He left the room without a word and went next to Jack’s office, leaving Tim’s room for last so he wouldn’t be rushed along from what was likely his best source of evidence. He walked straight over to the hidden safe behind a painting and tested it, then opened it for good measure, just to be safe. If it _had_ been a robbery, then seizing Tim and forcing him to open the safe would have been a decent enough move. They might have decided after they’d beaten Jack and gotten the money from the safe to take Tim hostage. Bruce couldn’t decide if it would be better or worse for the kidnapper to be a common thug. On the one hand, it meant that retrieving Tim would be easier, but on the other, it meant that Tim was in the hands of an impulsive fool. A villain might just kill him, though, or reveal his identity.

He opened the safe quickly, remembering that the combination was Jack and Janet’s birthdays put together and reversed.

“How do you know the combination?” the detective asked, another glimmer of suspicion in his tone, and dammit, Bruce had nearly forgotten he was there. He knew well enough that very helpful, over-cooperative people were very often suspected of trying to remove themselves from suspicion, but he didn’t know what else to do. He had to find Tim, but he couldn’t do that at the cost of being brought down to the station and wasting so much time.

“Tim lived with me for several months after his mother was murdered and his father was put into a coma,” Bruce said as he swung open the safe. Judging by the wads of cash and a box of Janet’s old jewelry sitting right there, it was not a robbery. Who would know Tim’s identity and try to take him? One of the Rogues? Or another villain? “He sent me once to get his birth certificate for his passport.”

For the trip to France, where he’d met Shiva. Would she have kidnapped him? No, that seemed unlikely, unless she was being paid for it.

He tightened his grip on the safe door, then shut and locked it and rehung the painting.

“Tim’s bedroom is this way,” he said, turning and leaving the room before he could be asked any more questions.

Tim’s room didn’t seem out of the ordinary either, but Bruce heard the detective inhale sharply.

Bruce frowned and turned to the man. “What is it? Did you see something?”

“It’s been ransacked!” the detective exclaimed.

Bruce snorted in grim amusement and shook his head. “Have you ever met a teenaged boy? I would have been worried if it was clean.”

Dick had never been tidy either, but Tim took _messy_ to a whole new level. He claimed that spreading everything out made thing easier to find, but Bruce suspected Tim just got lost in his own mind as he frequently did and had no time for menial tasks like tidying his bedroom.

Jason had been tidy, though. Meticulously. At first, he’d had so little, and he’d crammed it all into one little backpack he kept by his window just in case he had to make a hasty retreat, but once he’d calmed down and settled, he’d become such a neat freak that he organized his sock drawer by color and material.

The memory struck a chord deep within him, and Bruce had to clench his fists tightly to keep from breaking down. He couldn’t lose another son, he couldn’t lose control, he couldn’t lose _time_ , not when it mattered so much.

“Sir?” the detective asked gruffly as Bruce started walking through the room with trembling hands.

Bruce swallowed hard and didn’t turn around. God, he was being so suspicious. As far as the world was concerned, Tim Drake and Bruce Wayne had almost nothing to do with each other. He’d shown up out of nowhere, barged into the crime scene, and was now getting overly emotional in the boy’s bedroom. _He_ would think that he was suspicious.

“My son,” he said thickly, “was killed when he was fifteen. I—I know he’s not my son, but he’s...Tim is in danger. We have to find him.”

There was a long silence before the detective finally said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

At least he sounded less suspicious, Bruce thought in bitter relief. Jason’s death had brought him Tim in the first place, and now it was diverting suspicion from Bruce so that he could maybe do for Tim what he couldn’t do for Jason.

“It—We—” Bruce choked up and couldn’t find the words. Detachedly, he was conscious of the fact that he was only further strengthening the ‘grieving father worried about a kid matching his son’s profile’ image while distancing himself from the ‘probable kidnapper’ by getting so upset, the way a man who loses a leg is conscious of the fact that at least he doesn’t have to go on that diet to lose weight anymore.

Something on the windowsill caught his eye, and he quickly picked his way through the piles of clothes and random camera equipment—maybe an intervention was need _please let an intervention be possible_ —until he could see it clearly without being close enough to disturb the scene.

“That’s a footprint,” the detective breathed.

It was, a muddy footprint of a boot, carelessly dug into the wood enough to have chipped the white paint. Tim might have been messy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave proof that he’d snuck out just sitting on the windowsill, and he wouldn’t have chipped the paint. He wouldn’t have been _heavy_ enough to chip the pain, and the print was much larger than Tim’s foot would be. If the man the print belonged to was proportional in size to his foot, then he was likely over six feet tall, and heavy as well judging by the scuffed paint, likely muscular.

“The point of entry,” Bruce said, cold confirmation settling on his chest like the weight of a casket. “They were after Tim.”

Bruce had excused himself after Tim’s room, feeling confident that he’d found all the clues he would be able to with the police breathing down his neck and absolutely terrified of how little he’d found. He had narrowed down the list of suspects to “men larger than Tim,” which was already most of Gotham. The man who’d snatched Tim could be anything from a supervillain to hired muscle who’d gotten lucky by threatening Tim’s dad.

He was so caught up in his worry that he nearly missed a major clue as he was walking out.

“The garage door is ajar,” he snapped and started toward it without waiting to see if anyone was following him.

Bruce nudged the door open the rest of the way with his toes to avoid corrupting any potential fingerprints. He could hear someone yelling at him, that he wasn’t supposed to be over there, Bruce was pretty sure, but it was just background noise.

The garage was missing a car. Jack’s car.

His heart hammered against his chest with fear and victory. They had a lead.

“Jack’s car is missing,” Bruce said tightly, barely biting his tongue in time to keep from telling them how to find it. He wasn’t doing well at playing the ‘airhead billionaire’ act at the moment. “The kidnapper might have stolen it. It’s a…I forget, it’s black though. Not very distinctive.”

It was a good choice for a kidnapper if he wanted to lay low. The red car would have been easily located, but a black car of any variety could blend in far better. Perhaps the attacker wasn’t as impulsive as he’d thought.

Bruce breathed out heavily and brushed his way past the gaggle of police officers in the door. “I need to call my ward—let him know what’s going on. He’ll want to help join the search.”

Dick was still upset with him, but they were doing better. Much better, and even if they weren’t, Dick would never leave Tim to suffer just because he was mad at Bruce. He should have called Dick earlier, given him a head start on the drive between Blüdhaven and Gotham, but it had entirely slipped his mind. If something happened to Tim because Bruce had been too scatterbrained to call for help….

Bruce ran a hand down his face as he nearly ran through the halls of the Drake house and down the front steps back to his car. He pulled out his phone and dialed Dick’s number, just hoping that his oldest son would pick up. He might be sleeping, injured, or mad at Bruce for some new hamartia he’d noticed.

Dick picked up on the third ring and Bruce released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding as he backed out of the driveway and took off toward the manor like a Bat out of hell.

“B, if this—”

“Tim has been kidnapped,” Bruce interrupted. He’d been trying to be firm, but his voice shook despite his best efforts. “From his house. His father has been beaten, but Tim appears to have been the main target. Please, I need you in Gotham.”

Dick’s breath rattled sharply on the other end of the line, and his own voice wobbled when he spoke. Dick might have not been there for Jason’s death, but it had rattled him as well. He wouldn’t lose another little brother if he could help it, Bruce was sure.

“I’m leaving now,” Dick said. “I’ll be there in an hour, tops. Do you know who—”

“No. I have no idea who did this, but I have a lead. I need to call Barbara now,” Bruce said, leaving the _provide any urgent information now or hang up_ unspoken.

“We’ll get him back,” Dick promised, but he didn’t sound as confident as he seemed to have been aiming for.

Bruce hung up before he could try to match Dick’s promise with a lie he only hoped would be true, then called Babs.

Barbara didn’t pick up, so Bruce waited until he was sent to her voicemail and tried again. This time, she picked up halfway through the first ring.

“Who the everloving _fuck_ is calling me at six in the morning? Where are my _fucking_ glasses? Who the _fuck_ is this?” Barbara snarled groggily.

Bruce would have been quietly amused at any other time or sadly reminded of Jason. It was a tossup these days.

“Tim’s been kidnapped from his home. The kidnapper stole Jack Drake’s car. I need you to find it for me, now,” Bruce said, speaking slowly even though it grated at his already frayed nerves. She sounded like she’d just woken up, though, and wasn’t up to speed yet. Speaking slowly was better than repeating himself, but only just.

Barbara inhaled sharply and a creaking of her bed in the background sounded like her pulling herself out of it. “I’m on it. Any idea who took him?”

Bruce shook his head before realizing she couldn’t see. “A man, judging by the boot print, probably six feet to six foot four. Heavy, too, likely with muscle if he was able to beat Tim. I don’t know if he’s leaving town or going to ground, or why he went after Tim. Check the—”

“I know. I've got my programs primed and ready to go, just tell me which car. Black BMW or Red Ferrari?” There was a clacking of computer keys for a minute.

"BMW."

"Have you called Dick?"

"Of course."

A relieved sigh on the other end. "I'm hanging up now. I'll call when I've got a hit. Don't distract me unless you've got new details that I _need_ to know."

The call clicked to an end as Bruce pulled into his own garage. He parked and hopped out of the car, making his way toward the cave with single-minded determination. Adrenaline was buzzing in his veins to the point of stiffness, and his arms felt heavy with a remembered weight, wet with blood he'd washed off long ago. 

Not this time. Not to Tim. Losing one child had been his greatest failure, losing two would be…

It wouldn’t come to that.

Even if it cost Bruce his _life_ , Tim was coming home safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part three is coming! Don't kill me! This was just nearly five thousand words and we haven't even gotten to the snuggles. Next chapter is Tim's POV, with four chapters total.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim' POV

Tim didn’t notice the rumbling purr of an engine or the smooth feeling of movement until they stopped.

He blinked slowly and rolled onto his back—only for every nerve in his body to come alive with pain.

Tim gasped and shot up, immediately regretting that decision too. His head spun so fast he thought it was going to drop straight off his shoulders. He collapsed straight backwards, landing _hard_ on the very wounds he’d been trying to protect, sending the burning pain screaming through his body so sharp that Tim sobbed and nearly passed back out.

Tim was only barely aware of a slight shake of the bench he was on at the edge of his perception as wave after wave of agony coursed through him.

A hand grabbed him and flipped him quickly onto his stomach.

“God _dammit_ , Replacement!” the person snapped, but Tim couldn’t do more than sob in desperate relief.

He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know why he was hurt, he didn’t know who had him or even that they weren’t the person who’d hurt him in the first place, but he could feel the firm pressure being kneaded into his shoulders, above the wounds, that grounded him and brought him back to himself. Tim closed his eyes and focused on his breath until his breathing even out from ragged gasps to just slight shuttering.

There was an exasperated sigh above him that made him flinch from reproach. “How the hell did you forget that you were _whipped_ , Replacement?”

 _Whipped_? That sounded right, but his head felt like it was being filled with cotton and lead at the same time, and thinking was too hard. Still, situational awareness and all that.

Tim groaned with the effort it took to turn his head to the side and open his eyes to look up. The light, dim as it was, still hurt his eyes and he clenched them shut with a gasp. That was enough situational awareness to know that his situation sucked.

The hand on his shoulders stilled, then moved to his head and the fingers wove gently through his hair, teasing out tangles and only snagging a little.

“Hey, baby bird. How are you feeling?” the voice asked, softening a bit.

 _Everything hurts and my head feels like cotton and I don’t know what’s going on and where I am and I want Bruce and Dick and Alfred, and I want Bruce to make my dad stop hurting me every time he’s mad at me, and I wish I was good enough for him, and I wish that people didn’t always leave me, and Bruce will leave me eventually because he doesn’t even really like me because I’m horrible,_ Tim tried to say. “Urrangh” and heartbroken sobs is what actually came out.

“…And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one,” the person said. “Do you remember what happened tonight?”

Tim frowned, which pulled at a wound on the side of his face, making him wince, which hurt his back. He bit his lip nearly enough to make it bleed in order to distract himself, then shook his head slightly when the pain felt less like red hot irons and more like really, really hot irons. He hoped he hadn’t been kidnapped by a villain, because he wasn’t going to be able to defend himself at all.

The hand kept carding through his hair, though, and it felt so nice. There was no way someone that kind could ever hurt him, so he relaxed and let the gentle touch continue.

“Your dad caught you coming home from patrol,” his caretaker told him, and now that he thought about that, yes, Tim remembered that. He’d vaguely remembered it before, at least that his dad _had_ whipped him, but it had been all blended in with all the other beatings his dad had given him with no sense of chronology to separate it out as being the most recent. That particular beating being the latest explained the fire of whip lashes on his back and the throbbing pain where his head had been hit…once? Twice? _Hard._

Tim nodded his understanding, and the man went on. “I beat him up for you, but you stopped me before I could kill him.”

The man’s fingers curled into what was nearly a fist, pulling on Tim’s hair just slightly by accident. He sounded very annoyed at Tim for that.

Tim inhaled sharply, not remembering… _his head was bleeding, his dad was furious, his dad was gonna whore him out, there was someone attacking his dad and he felt such mind-blowing relief before he realized that the new person was going to cave his dad’s face in right there, and he was trying to pull the person off, and then…_

Tim’s eyes shot open, despite the stabbing pain, just to find that face he’d seen a thousand times behind a mask, through a lens, but so much smaller and softer.

The face that looked down on him was older, older than Jason ever got to be, hard lines and sharp features with none of the lingering baby fat that gave his face that impish quality that he wielded like a psychological sledgehammer when he was Robin. No matter how much Tim tried, he could never humiliate anyone as badly as he’d seen people humiliated when Jason _destroyed_ them with a childlike little smirk. His eyes were…green, and there was a tuft of white in his hair.

Tim’s heart sank a bit.

He was still dreaming, then.

He sighed wearily and closed his eyes. People didn’t come back to life, no one had saved him from his dad, and he couldn’t even remember _Jason_ right. It would explain how… _off_ everything felt, how heavy and swishy and stuffed his head felt all at once. He felt like Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. Everything was too big or too small, nonsense and surreal.

At least if everything was a dream, then his dad _hadn’t_ really caught him sneaking in through the living room window so he could grab a snack from the kitchen on his way to his room. His dad _hadn’t_ slapped and kicked him around while screaming for ten minutes before throwing him to the floor and demanding he strip. The jangle of his dad’s belt buckle _hadn’t_ made his stomach twist in dread as he heard his dad work the belt loose of his pants. His dad _hadn’t_ slammed his head onto the coffee table and made plans to use Tim as a piece of meat he could throw at his business partners to butter them up.

Unless that had all happened and Tim had just passed out from head trauma. Jason had said that he was dreaming, but maybe Tim was just dead. He’d heard something about people getting a new body in Heaven, which would explain why Jason looked so off.

But if…if his dad had _really_ been planning to whore Tim out like that, and Tim was going to actually wake up, then…then he might really have to tell Bruce. He’d thought about it before, plenty of times, but he could never quite…

Bruce didn’t really want him. Tim was just a placeholder, a useful annoyance who’d muscled his way into a grieving father’s life and demanded that he risk reliving his recent trauma because the man would rather fight himself into an early grave beside his son than go to therapy. Even if Tim’s dad _did_ lose custody of him, it wasn’t like Bruce actually wanted Tim around _forever_. Sure, he’d taken Tim in before, but they’d known his dad was going to wake up, so it was obviously not going to be permanent, and even then, it was just because Batman needed a Robin, and Tim couldn’t be Robin in foster care. It had mattered so much more, then, that Tim be there, though. But Bruce was steadier, happier. Dick was around more, even if things were still a bit tense, they’d figure things out. If Tim got taken by CPP _now_ , Bruce would probably be annoyed at first to lose all that time and money if Tim went away, but he’d be more than willing to toss Tim aside and find himself a new Robin.

Tim couldn’t deal with that.

Tim could have dealt with that, maybe, in the beginning, when he’d just wanted Dick to go back to be Robin again in the first place, but he couldn’t deal with it now after getting to know the Wayne. He couldn’t lose Dick Grayson’s octopus hugs that wrapped so much around him that the counted for three hugs at once, or the way that Dick would just sit and talk with him like Tim wasn’t just some stupid little kid, or the way Dick sometimes called Tim his little brother, even if Tim didn’t think he _really_ meant it. He couldn’t lose doing homework in the kitchen as Alfred bustled around and asked him about his day, or the weird looks Alfred gave him when he thought that Tim should eat more but didn’t want to say anything, or Sunday mornings when Alfred made crepes and actually sat down at the table to eat with them. He couldn’t…

He couldn’t lose _Bruce_. He couldn’t lost the way Bruce watched out for him, even if he… _probably_ …didn’t really like Tim, like when he’d taken Tim in when his dad was in a coma, or when he’d arranged his mom’s funeral when people kept asking Tim questions he didn’t understand, or when his dad went on business trips and Bruce ordered Tim to stay at the manor even though Tim would be _fine_ alone, or the countless times that Bruce had been so attentive to Tim’s physical health that he’d nearly found out what his dad did. He couldn’t lose those nights when Bruce was injured but wanted Tim to come over _anyway_ so he could eat dinner with them and maybe watch a movie or just hang out. He couldn’t lose those rare little hugs Bruce gave him, tentative like he was worried his arms would fall off if he put them around Tim. The way Bruce touched Tim was so different from how his dad touched him. Bruce…maybe he didn’t _like_ Tim, but he did _care_. Yet again, Tim wished that Bruce was his real dad.

Even if Tim _did_ get taken from his dad’s care, that didn’t necessarily mean that he would go to Bruce’s even if Bruce _did_ want him to keep being Robin. CPP didn’t like placing kids with single men. They hadn’t even liked placing him with Bruce the first time, but that had only gone through because his mom had just died and Bruce had played up how important it was for a boy to be around someone who understood what he was going through at such a time in his life. Not that Bruce really got it, because he’d known exactly what to feel when his mom died, unlike Tim, who still didn’t know how he felt about the fact that the woman who’d birthed him and then ignored him for thirteen years was rotting in a box somewhere in the ground.

If Tim got take from his dad because of _child abuse_ , then it was highly unlikely that he would be placed right next door unless his dad actually was in jail. It just wouldn’t be safe, they’d think, not knowing about Wayne Manor’s insane security system. And it wasn’t even _that bad_. Not like how _other_ Gotham kids got beaten. Certainly not enough to risk facing the unfettered jaws of the Gotham foster care system as a Bristol outsider. Besides, it wasn’t like his dad wouldn’t probably be able to buy Tim back no matter what, and then he’d be even _more_ mad at Tim.

No, it was better to just take the beatings and slaps and yelling when they came so he could still pretend, even if just for the few hours and days at a time that he could snatch with the Waynes, that someone cared about him in a way that really mattered. That he was more than what he did. He loved Bruce, and he never wanted Bruce to realize how much better his life would be without Tim in it to screw everything up.

If his dad was going to whore him out, though…That was too much. Bruce would at the very least _stop_ Jack. He might even get the CPP to let Tim stick around until he could find him a foster home that wasn’t going to traffic him for his organs or sexual potential.

Two hands, feeling warm and real, reached under Tim’s arms and pulled him slowly up against a chest that felt sold and corporeal. It was so strange how real the body felt felt, even through the surreal haze that thinking _was_ at the moment.

Jason pulled Tim the rest of the way out of the car and up against his body. He splayed one hand on the back of Tim’s neck and supported Tim’s legs with his other arm, then started walking. Tim knew he should help, be something other than deadweight, but his body felt like lead, and he couldn’t twitch his limbs enough to wrap them around Jason. Dream physics applied, though, so as long as he just _wished_ for Jason to be able to carry him, then he should be able to manage it without too much trouble.

“Dammit, you’re tiny, shrimp,” Jason grumbled in his ear, but Tim sighed and nestled his head against Jason’s shoulder. Dream physics worked like a charm.

Normally, Tim wouldn’t have dared be so clingy and pathetic, but since it was a dream, surely that meant Jason wasn’t going to leave him. He would have already left Tim if he was going to leave. And Dream-Jason was so warm and comfy, even though his shoulder was a bit bony. He felt really strong, though, and he’d definitely protect Tim from any punishments his dream-dad could throw at him. He kind of felt like Bruce, but his hug was more confident. _Jason’s face, Bruce’s body, and Dick’s hugs._ An amalgamation of his heroes, there to rescue him. A smile tugged quickly at Tim’s mouth before exhaustion melted it off his face.

Of course, when he _actually_ died and met Jason, he was going to be cool for their first meeting. Maybe beg forgiveness for taking his place or ask for his autograph or something like that, but he _definitely_ was going to make a better first impression than being beaten up and sobbing his eyes out on multiple occasions. This was just a practice run, to get all that stuff Bruce called “touch starvation” out of his system before he could embarrass himself in the afterlife.

Jason was certainly helping with that goal, rubbing his bare hand up and down Tim’s neck, into his hair, then down to his collar again. If Tim were a cat—which had nearly happened during a run-in with a magician a few weeks ago—he would have been purring in happiness. Dream-Jason…it must have been Tim’s subconscious, putting his hero’s aged-up face on a body so much like Bruce’s. Bruce didn’t hold him often, because Tim wasn’t his real kid, but when he _did_ , when he forgot that Tim was just a fake, his hugs felt solid and secure just like that.

Tim closed his eyes, not passing out, but not caring enough to follow what was happening. They must have been going up stairs at one point, because Tim bounced slightly with each step, and then Jason’s gait evened out until it stopped suddenly. There was a click of a key in a lock—and then again and again and _again_ , because apparently there were a lot of locks—and then they were moving again.

“I’m going to put you on the bed, shrimp,” Jason said as he carried Tim farther into the…house? Apartment? Into another room. “You had shitty bandages and no ointment, so I’ve got to get those off you and wrap you back up before those bandages start to stick.”

Tim whined in incoherent annoyance. That sounded like it was going to hurt, and Tim was having a mostly good dream, and good dreams weren’t supposed to _hurt_ so much. His head was already throbbing and felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Jason just sighed and sat Tim down on the edge of a creaky mattress.

Jason tried to pull back, but Tim clung to him stubbornly. No, this was a _good_ dream, and Jason was going to _cuddle him_ if it meant he had to spend the rest of the dream wrestling his subconscious into submission.

His stupid dream gave Jason super strength and Tim noodle arms.

Jason lifted Tim’s arms carefully from his shoulders, then flopped Tim onto his stomach, making his head bounce against the pillow.

Tim groaned in pain when his brain felt like it _bounced_ against his skull. He is eyes were clenched tight, but he could feel how the world was spinning around him so fast that he nearly threw up.

“Tim?” Jason asked hesitantly, poking the back of Tim’s head with a finger.

Tim groaned again and pulled away. He couldn’t move far before he felt like he was going to throw up again, so hopefully Dream-Jason got the hint to _not_ do that.

“…Your head hurt? Your dad hit it pretty hard,” Jason said slowly. His hand touched Tim’s head again, carding through his hair but also pushing his face into the pillow, striking that exact balance between well-intentioned and extremely annoying.

“Unnngh,” Tim moaned as he flopped a hand out to try to find Jason’s arm so he could pull it into his own where it would actually be comforting and not painful.

“You sound pretty out of it,” Jason mumbled, more to himself than to Tim. “Stay put, baby bird.”

The bed creaked and shifted as Jason stood, and Tim groaned again, reaching out without looking for his hero. He couldn’t _leave_! Tim could be good!

Tim’s fingers brushed Jason’s sleeve, but he didn’t have time to grasp it before Jason stood up. Jason’s heavy retreating footsteps rattled in Tim’s head and his eyes prickled with tears of pain and rejection as his dream quickly spiraled into a nightmare. His head hurt, his back hurt, his dad hated him, and Jason was _leaving_.

Tim pressed his face deep into the pillow, wondering if he’d just wake up in the real world if he were to suffocate. Or maybe he’d just fall asleep. Even if he didn’t, at least the pillow numbed the pain of the light and sounds as it molded around his face and ears.

Just as he was beginning to despair never waking up and being stuck, pained and alone in that dreamscape forever, Jason’s footsteps slunk back into the room, quieter before, with the hiss of socks on woods instead of the clunking of his boots. Tim relaxed with a slight sigh. Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare after all.

“I’m going to sit you up so I can get those bandages off you and check you for a concussion,” Jason warned Tim when his feet stopped in beside the bed.

Concussion? Jason thought Tim had a concussion?

He didn’t wait for another one of Tim’s extremely eloquent responses that time. He scooped Tim up, propped him against the head board so that his uninjured neck and shoulders could bear most of his weight, then _stabbed_ Tim’s eyes with a stupid _blinding_ light.

Tim blinked and looked away with a betrayed cry, and Jason whistled.

“Hell, kid. That’s gotta hurt. Might need a head scan…” Jason sighed, then his deft fingers pulled off Tim’s sweatshirt and shirt and brushed up against Tim’s sides as they slowly unwound the bandages.

Jason had been right, and a bit too late. The blood from his cleaned wounds had started to congeal and dry in the fibers of the bandages, wrapping into them so that pulling the bandages off felt like pulling a layer of skin with them. When the bandage started to catch, though, Jason placed a warm wet washcloth against the spot for a few moments until the blood had been loosened and Jason could pull the bandage away with ease.

“He do this to you often?” Jason asked after a long silence. The bandages were almost halfway off.

Tim nodded slightly, enough that he didn’t have to talk, but not enough that it would hurt his head, then yawned. His dad _did_ beat him fairly often, though it was much more now that his mom was dead and his dad was in town more often. Bruce had gotten close to noticing several times in the last few weeks.

Jason growled under his breath. “Bastard. You should have let me kill him, Replacement.”

Tim whined in protest, giving the slightest shake of his head. “Not ‘placement.”

Jason snorted and kept unwinding the bandages in silence for a few moments. “How long was I dead before he found you? Before he gave you my costume and my place at the table?”

There was bitterness in that voice, pain and betrayal that Tim knew very well himself.

“Bruce didn’t…” Tim had to gasp for breath at a catch. Jason hissed and pressed the washcloth onto it, making it sting even worse. Everything hurt, and he was so _tired_ from that little taste of sleep he’d gotten in the car. The concussion felt like it had settled in, and none of the adrenaline…was it adrenaline in dreams?…from before was helping. “…find me. I…knew. Made him take me.”

“You knew?” Jason scoffed and pulled back the washcloth so he could give the bandage a cautious tug. “You mean you just walked up and told him ‘I’m your kid now and I know you’re Batman’?”

Tim frowned heavily and opened his eyes with great effort, because Dream-Jason was being stupid and needed to know that. “I’m not his son.”

“Me neither,” Jason chirped, but he didn’t sound happy. He sounded sad and angry, and that wasn’t even _true_.

“Bruce loves you,” Tim argued. “Nearly killed ‘imself…”

Jason paused as he pulled the last of the soiled bandages away. “What do you mean? He nearly killed himself? B seems more the type to take any pain he _might_ have felt out on everyone else.”

“Kept getting hurt. Reckless. Too much. I made a powerpoint.” Tim closed his eyes again and leaned forward into Jason’s shoulder. Talking was hard. Balance was hard. Thinking was hard. “Tt’s why…’m Robin. Batman needs a Robin.”

“So he replaced me,” Jason scoffed, even as one of his hands came up and wrapped tightly around Tim’s shoulders. “Might not be _your_ fault, but he still replaced me _months_ after I died.”

Tim groaned in annoyance and pain. “Nooo, don’t be _stupid_ , Jason! ‘m _tired_ and my head hurts and I don’t wanna _talk so much_. . Bruce needs a…Jason. Not a Tim. Bruce ‘sn’t _Batman_ , Batman is _…_ My head _hurts_.”

Jason tensed under his body, and if he said anymore stupid stuff, Tim was going to—he didn’t know what, but he was _going to_.

Jason sighed and leaned Tim forward so he was lying on his bare stomach on the scratchy comforter. He didn’t say anything more, which wasn’t _good_ , but it was _better_.

Jason unzipped something, probably his first aid kit, which was a weird thing for a dead boy to have, but oh well. After a few more moments of silence, Jason used his fingers to massage what felt like antibiotic ointment onto each of the gashes. Tim did his best, but he still hissed and bit his lip at every touch.

“There,” Jason said at last, and Tim was hoping that meant _done_.

It did _not_ mean done, and maybe Tim preferred Jason when he was dead and not being a _jerk_.

Jason placed gauze pads on each of the wounds, using the ointment to glue each pad to Tim’s back. Even the light pressure on the welts _hurt,_ and he was sure his entire back that wasn’t bleeding was bruised.

Next, Jason sat Tim up again, the gauze pads pulling awkwardly as they slid down his back at a glacial pace. Jason quickly began to wrap Tim up again in new bandages that felt thicker and better quality than the ones he had in the first aid kit Steph had given him for Christmas.

Still, being upright hurt his head, and the new pressure on his back hurt the cuts and bruises there. At least Jason was letting Tim keep leaning into his arm for comfort and support.

Finally, Jason was apparently satisfied, because he shifted Tim off his shoulder and helped him lie down on his stomach again.

“There. Get some more sleep, baby bird,” Jason said, petting Tim’s head again, gentler that time. It wasn’t shoving Tim’s head into the pillow or making his head hurt worse. It was just…nice.

Tim hummed in approval as Jason carded his hands through Tim’s hair. He was so warm. So present. So _not dead_. Everything Tim wanted to leach from Bruce or Alfred or Dick after a bad beating, but there he was, even if it was just a dream, being pet and cared for by _Jason_.

Tim yawned and nestled farther into the blankets but didn’t actually get under them. That seemed like way too much work, even if he _was_ cold. Jason’s hand left his head and returned a moment later to pull a throw blanket up over Tim’s shoulders. It wasn’t actually very warm, but it was very kind. He closed his eyes and every muscles in his body turned to lead like a switch had been flipped.

The bed shifted as Jason stood up, but instead of getting into the bed and staying, he started to walk away.

Tim cried out before he could even process it. Jason couldn’t _leave_. He’d just _done that_ , and he couldn’t leave _again_.

Jason turned back at his whine, and Tim forced his eyes to open again so he could scowl at Jason properly.

“What? Are you dying?” Jason was frowning, but then something seemed to occur to him, and his mouth twitched up into a smirk. “Don’t worry. I know a guy.”

“Don’t _go_ ,” Tim tried to order, but it came out as a mumble.

Jason snorted and moved to stand up. “You’ll be fine. Just get some sleep. I’ll figure out what I’m doing with you later.”

Tim’s eyes welled with tears. He was being too clingy. Even in his own dream, he couldn’t get what he wanted without it driving everyone away. His own hero, resurrected just to save Tim, metaphorically, couldn’t stand him.

“…Why are you crying?”

Tim’s breath hitched, and he had to fight back the sobs. “No one _ever_ stays. It’s okay. You can go. I’ll be fine here a—a—alo—”

Tim broke down, turning his face back into the pillow so that maybe Dream-Jason wouldn’t _see_ how completely pathetic he was and then _never come back_.

A hand was set on his head so fast it was nearly a slap, pushing Tim’s head farther into the pillow.

“Please stop crying.” Jason sounded a bit choked. Just like how he’d probably choked when he was _dying_ , _alone_ in _Ethiopia_. Where even _was_ Ethiopia? Was that in Brazil? Or Rhode Island? Jason was _blown up_ in _Rhode Island!_

“You _died_ and now you _hate me,_ ” Tim cried harder, but the words were muffled by the fabric his face was being shoved into.

“…I don’t… _hate_ you.” But he hesitated because he _did_ hate Tim and was just being too polite to tell him because everyone was always too polite to tell Tim what it was that made them hate him so much, so he could never fix it, so everyone was just going to hate him _forever_.

“Yes y-y-ya _aAAHH_!” A massive yawn took him off guard, and when it was done, he didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. It was already too late.

“…You know…I’m a bit tired. And this is my bed,” Jason said after a moment.

He wanted Tim to _move_? Tim could maybe get up if he left most his internal organs behind to lighten the ship, but then Jason would have a liver in his bed. And a spleen. And Tim _liked_ his spleen.

Jason grabbed under Tim’s shoulders and pulled him up against his body. Tim melted into the hold, soaking in every last drop he could before Jason dumped him on the floor or carried him to the couch.

Jason used his other hand to push back the blankets, and Tim didn’t understand what was going on until Jason sat down on the bed and laid back with Tim lying on his broad chest.

Jason was staying. Tim was staying.

Jason wanted him.

Jason pointedly did _not_ look Tim in the eye as he bent forward to pull the blankets over them. Tim just stared at Jason and his reddening cheeks in stunned awe. Mustering more strength than even Superman had, Tim wriggled a hand free of the blankets and poked Jason’s cheek. It was hot.

Jason Todd was _blushing_.

Tim snickered and sniffled, ignoring Jason’s grumbling, and snuggled down so he could pillow his head on Jason’s shoulder.

“You got snot on this pillow,” Jason accused as he lifted his head and flipped the pillow over, but he couldn’t have been _that_ mad, because he put his hand on Tim’ head and pet him, giving him a brief scratch behind the ears before flinching and going back to petting. “I hope you’re happy.”

And Tim was.

Tim was very happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: this will be like, 2000 words max because Tim has a nasty concussion and can't think much  
> Me: *takes 2650 words just to get them into the apartment*  
> Me: ....I'm going to go write a thing about Jason being a selkie because this is WEIRD.
> 
> I was researching concussions and I came across this story of this kid who got hit in the face with a cricket ball and nearly died, but the really tragedy is that his parents legitimately named him Harry Butt.
> 
> Alright, so, my plan is to finish up the year with a few more fics, then in January, my goal is basically to catch up on all of those sequels I've been promising AND work on my original novel. I might end up posting the novel on this site, since I'd really like to get a few beta readers, but I'm not sure yet. The next chapter of this probably won't come out until January, BUT, I might end up needing to add a fifth chapter, so I think y'all might be able to forgive me for that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jason again.

There was a weigh pressing Jason’s body down against the bed, growing heavier with every breath, and blankets hampering any movement of his limbs.

_Wall trapping him in, satin all around him, the air was running out, splinters in his hands, dirt on his face, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, BRUCE._

No. Jason took a deep, shuddering breath and forced himself to focus on the differences. It would do no good to save the kid from his asshole father just to kill him in a Lazarus Pit-heightened panic attack.

 _In for four_.

The coarse weave of the blankets and sheets around him now, as different from the satin as he could manage. The room around him, brightly lit and wider than the few square feet he was occupying.

_Hold for seven._

A soft hiss of breath every other second, brushing warm against his neck.A widening patch of wetness seeping through his shirt on his shoulder. A small chest expanding and contracting slowly against Jason’s. His own fingers, threaded through sweaty black hair.

Jason only managed five seconds of breathlessness before he was breathing out just enough to gasp down another breath.

_Again._

_In for four_.

That was the easy part. Counting as his chest rose slowly in proof that he was alive.

 _Hold for seven_.

The Replacement wasn’t… It wasn’t…. _that_ hard to breathe with his body draped over Jason’s, even though most his weight was on Jason’s chest and stomach. He was—he was a _shrimp_ , really. How Bruce ever let him out the door to fight was beyond him, but Bruce— No, Jason wasn’t going to think about Bruce. Where was he?

_Six, seven._

_Out for eight._

Jason flexed his trembling fingers in Tim’s hair. His chest twitched violently with the need to breath, but he counted up as slowly as he could manage. It was still rushed, but it was the best he was going to be able to do.

He carded his fingers gently through Tim’s hair and mouthed the last few numbers.

_Good job, Jaylad. Let’s do it again._

_In for four_.

The tension in his chest loosened slightly, making it a bit easier to breathe.

The kid snuffled in his sleep and rubbed his nose into Jason’s shirt, probably wiping a shit ton of snot into the fabric because apparently he’d been replaced by a three-year-old, but it gave him something else to focus on. Jason pet his hair a bit more insistently to try to settle him, but then Tim started to roll. Jason sighed and grabbed his shoulder—loosely, not even trying to hurt him—to keep him from rolling off Jason or onto his injured back. Either would wake him, and the kid clearly needed sleep after the night he’d just had.

More than that, _Jason_ needed Tim to stay asleep.

What the fucking _hell_ was he going to do with the kid?

Eventually, Bruce was going to come looking for him. Probably. No, definitely, because his replacement was tiny and adorable, and all the research he’d done had shown that Timothy Drake was an obedient little duckling who’d somehow imprinted on a bat. Bruce would _definitely_ come to find Tim, which meant that Jason couldn’t be around when he did. Unfortunately, Tim was concussed and probably dissociating besides his other injuries, and Jason didn’t trust him being alone for long.

“You know, you’re cute, but you’re trouble,” Jason grumbled, ruffling Tim’s hair. “I had a plan. A big plan. There were explosions and shit involved. And a bit of murder. But _nooo_ , you just had to be—”

Jason sighed. The Replacement just had to be an abused little kid. The Replacement just had to be _human_. No wonder Bruce fell for him enough to completely forget about Jason.

….except, apparently, he didn’t forget Jason. Apparently, he’d nearly gotten himself killed being reckless because he missed Jason. Maybe Tim was wrong, but…

 _Bruce needs a Jason_.

…Maybe Tim was right.

But Talia wouldn’t _lie_ to him…would she?

A tinge of green and a dull whine of old memories playing in the back of his mind forced him to stop. He could….deal with that later. Everything. He just…

All the strength and tension left him like he’d been hit by a crowbar. His hand stilled in Tim’s hair. It was all too much to think about, and he wasn’t going to manage it without getting furious at _someone_. With the kid as helpless as he was, it wasn’t the time.

Normally when he was trying to avoid all his troubles, he would go for a walk or do something to occupy his mind—generally punching shit—but since it wasn’t like he could go anywhere with Timothy Drake on his chest like the world’s largest cat, he had only one escape.

It was only once he’d closed his eyes that he realized how tired he’d been the whole time. It had been a long night, and it was going to be a longer day. He’d never been able to sleep very heavily, courtesy of his time on the streets and having Willis Fucking Todd for a father, but with the gentle rise and fall of Tim’s chest, the sound of soft breathing, his own personal space heater…

_Ha ha ha hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!_

Jason’s eyes flew open in a blaze of green—he was alive, he wasn’t supposed to be alive, he was _dead dead dead,_ where was he, why couldn’t he move, what was on him, he couldn’t _breathe—_ before it all crashed back down and the green glowed _brighter_.

That fucker beating his kid, planning to _whore_ his fourteen-year-old out, and Tim perfectly able to fight him off but forced to take that shit because he couldn’t trust his _own fucking father_ with the truth that he was Robin.

Jason forced himself to take a slow, deep breath and push the Lazarus Pit’s influence off as much as he could. If he went off the deep end at Drake no. 1, his rage was certain to run wild until it circled back around to Drake no. 2, and Tim was in no fit state to fight or run.

It would be so easy, though, to slip out from underneath Tim, who was stirring but not truly awake yet and still seemed to think everything was a dream, and go back to that house, or maybe the hospital if Jack Drake had called for an ambulance. How hard would it be to slit his throat and leave him bleed out while drowning in his own blood? Or maybe he’d let Drake live, but since he clearly didn’t _like_ his offspring, Jason could make sure that he wouldn’t _have_ anymore.

 _That would be nice_ , the rage in him purred, and the vengeful side that had come so close to pushing Garzonas off that balcony purred along with it.

Tim chose that moment to yawn dramatically and smack the back of his head _hard_ into Jason’s cheekbone.

“Shit, Replacement!” Jason snapped, his fingers curling into a fist. Robin wanted a fight? Then Jason would—

Robin did _not_ want a fight, Jason reminded himself with gritted teeth and a growing headache. Ro— _Tim_ was sleeping on top of Jason because Jason had _put him there_ , and being smacked by unnaturally hard heads was an occupational hazard of being a self-inflicting martyr.

Tim shifted again, then flinched and drew in a sharp breath. His spindly fingers twitched a moment in warning before curling tight, his nails digging in and dragging across the leather of Jason’s jacket with a muted _screech_ like nails on a chalkboard. Jason winced and tried not to be mad, because, again, his fault, but there was no way he was getting those marks off, and he’d _liked_ that jacket.

Jason forced himself to take deep, level breaths even as Tim’s breathing picked up erratically and his little body trembled with whimpers of pain.

“Shit, Timmy,” Jason groaned.

He hadn’t thought of that when he went to bed, but Tim must have been in _horrible_ pain already, and bashing his head into Jason had definitely hurt him more than it had hurt Jason. Jason didn’t keep pain killers in his safehouse on principle, but that principle was dependent on Jason not bringing wounded birds back to them.

Worse, while the lime green tint in his vision had _faded_ , it wasn’t _gone_ , and it might come back. Hell, he had not thought any of this out. No, fuck that, he _had_ though _extensively_ about what he was going to do the previous night, and his plan had been completely tossed out the window the second he found out that Robin #3 had a bit of a sob story.

Tim shifted and tried to get up, digging his bony elbows into Jason’s ribs as he did and briefly making it even harder to breathe. It was only through sheer force of will that he didn’t throw Tim off him and roll off the bed in the opposite direction. God, he had to get out, he needed—

Jason grabbed Tim’s shoulder and guided him as gently as he could—which was pretty abrupt, but not painful—off of Jason and into a sitting position that would keep any pressure off his injured back.

Tim whined incoherently and grabbed Jason’s wrist, but it was a simple twist to get his hand free.

“Not right now, baby bird,” Jason breathed, kicking off the blankets and standing up.

“Who—?” Tim rubbed at his eyes and blinked blearily up at Jason, then squinted and gestured vaguely at his own bangs while staring intently at Jason’s. “No. No skunk. Just Robin.”

…It was easy to remember why he’d wanted to punch the kid.

Too easy.

He needed to get out.

“Go back to sleep, Timmy. I’ll be back when you get up, okay?” Jason tried to sound as soothing as possible, but it was hard to do so while actively clenching his teeth against magical murderous rage that whispered that Timmy’s head would look a lot better if it was pointing the opposite direction.

Just his head.

Tim’s face screwed up into that goddamn needy pout that he’d been so weak against…shit, he didn’t know how long he’d been out. It looked like it was at least noon through the window, so maybe five or six hours. That could be enough time for Bruce to have tracked them down…but no, Jason had been careful. Ish. Carefulish. He’d kept away from security cameras, and no one would be able to see Tim in the backseat covered with a blanket through traffic cams. Even if _he_ were caught on camera…well, his face had changed a lot in the nearly two years he’d been away. Even Oracle wouldn’t immediately think _Jason Todd_ upon seeing his face, and Babs was the smart one, whatever shit Bruce spouted about being the World’s Greatest Detective.

“I’ll be right back, kid,” Jason promised, placing his hand on Tim’s shoulder and slowly pushing him down until his face hit the pillow right where Jason’s head had been.

For the first time, Jason became aware of how sweaty he was and how the pillow probably stank, but Tim didn’t protest. He barely turned his face so that he wouldn’t suffocate, and there were tears glistening in the corners of his eyes.

Jason sighed and ran a hand through his hair before running the same hand through Tim’s hair. The green faded just a bit more with Tim’s next pathetic sniffle.

“Hey,” Jason said quietly, “I know it hurts. I’m just going to get you some pain killers. I don’t have any in the apartment.”

Tim’s shoulders shook in a repressed sob. “B—but you’re _leaving_!”

Jason flinched. Was that seriously more important to the kid than the actual physical agony he must have been in? Jason _had_ to get out, though, and clear his head before he hurt the kid or someone else. The green was faded, but it was still _there_ , and it _would_ come back if Jason didn’t deal with it. There wasn’t an option to just stay with Tim and cuddle some more, but that didn’t change that the kid was clearly _devastated_.

Jason moved his hand from Tim’s head to his uninjured shoulders and massaged gently at the tension growing there. Tim resisted a few moments before he gave in and let Jason work out the knots of muscle.

“I promised I’d be back,” Jason reminded him.

Tim sniffed hard and turned to swipe his nose against the pillowcase, meaning that both sides were now smeared in snot, and Jason was going to have to do laundry.

“That’s what everyone says,” Tim whispered, tears streaming from his eyes.

Jason’s hand stilled a moment before he gave Tim’s shoulder a firm, grounding squeeze. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

Tim nodded wordlessly, helplessly.

Jason sighed again. Playing up the delusions was probably going to shoot him in the foot, but he could deal with that _later_ if it meant the kid stopped crying _now_.

“Then you can just dream that I’ll be back, silly.”

Tim frowned, his face getting all drawn up like he was about to argue with Jason on the point of dream logics, but then he snapped his jaw shut and glanced up at Jason to meet his eyes. Jason tried to look as sincere and not murdery as he could.

Tim must have seen something there that he could trust or something that he couldn’t, because he lowered his eyes and slumped into the pillow.

“Okay,” he said, more defeated than believing.

Jason ruffled Tim’s hair and stood up. “Stay put. I’ll be right back, Tim. Bi—” he bit his tongue, then cringed and finished the sentence that would probably calm Tim a bit more. “—bird’s honor, kiddo.”

Tim mumbled something in reply, but Jason couldn’t make it out and didn’t try. He just grabbed his wallet from the nightstand drawer, threw it in his pocket, and all but ran out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all. My baby brother is being indoctrinated into loving Batman. He's three, and it's wonderful. He likes me to be Batgirl or Robin (I'm Steph, cause I'm blond with thick hair) while we beat up the "Joker" (the brother who doesn't understand subscribers and was keeping bottles of his own pee in his bedroom) and randomly pull "Nightwing" (middle little brother, 9) and "Damian" (Little sister, 15, not always Robin because Steph has to be Robin sometimes :) into the fights. I'm hoping that he'll grow up, get a job that makes money (I want to be a novel editor, as does the guy I like, so *snorts* we sure aren't making any money) and buys all the canon comics and movies so I can mooch off him. I have ~15 years at least before there is any likelihood of this plan coming to fruition, but, I mean, long term investments, right?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Red Robin Hood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29069109) by [candlebreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlebreak/pseuds/candlebreak)




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